Page 78 of Tracking Luxe

“No. You stir me up.”

Fuck, that’s more like it.

That he understood and he began to smile, his beard twitching as he snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her in, crotch to crotch.

“I didn’t say it was a good thing.” She chastised wagging her finger in his face. “You get me mad when I shouldn’t be mad.”

“All I’m hearing is I get you wet and Steele is old worn slippers.” A smirk slid home. “I’m good with that.”

“You’re an impossible man.”

“I’m a hard man hard up for you.”

“I suppose you are. Huh. I like your jealousy.” She said it like it had never occurred to her before.

“If I could, I would keep you in a gilded cage. Captor and captive, love. Keep you for myself. And I don’t fucking understand it either. This is not me. I don’t do risky shit like tie a woman to a bed that hasn’t asked me to. But I look at you, smiling at another man and I want to lock you in a cage of my arms like a fucking caveman.”

Hearing her moan Grinder angled his face down to hers, eye to eye, he desperately wanted to touch her somewhere he wouldn’t have an audience and tell her how much he missed her, to cemented something between them. His buddies were incredibly nosy fuckers.

He was thinking like a man did about his old lady.

“While you sound surprisingly sweet, you need to rein it in, it’s ridiculous to act like that as though you saw me fooling around on the floor with Jamie. Even if I was …”

He growled from the back of his throat and he stepped into her space capturing her tightly with possessive hands, pressing their foreheads together, his voice turned sore sounding. “Don’t fucking finish that sentence, Luxe. For my sanity, please don’t.”

He tasted the panic on her tongue as she pushed against his chest, reluctantly he put the space she wanted between them. "This has turned serious suddenly. I---it’s crazy. What you’re saying it’s ridiculous. What I do, where I go and with who is none of your business, Nathan."

He frowned. “Don’t say that, love. You know we have something.”

“Sex.”

“It’s more than that. Can you say it isn’t?”

“Don’t smile at any other man, Luxe.” He grinned at her imitation. Reaching for her, the rejection when she pulled back stung his chest.

“No, we’re not doing this, I have a job to do,with Jamie… so deal with that, maybe if I decide otherwise, you can see me later.”

Fire in the pit of his stomach, Grinder had the distinct realization he was about to lose this and couldn’t see, save for groveling, how to rewind and fix it.

“Goddammit, Luxe.” Throat working, looking up to the heavens. This wasn’t how he wanted it going the first time he saw her again. “Baby, stay a while…”

It was too late, she was already pissed as hell with him. He wanted that anger under him.

But she was already striding to her car. Scowling over her shoulder.

"Go sit in your gilded cage, kidnapper."

Grinder watched until her car disappeared, feeling the full weight of his foot in his mouth.

He heard slow clapping and caught the shit eating grin of his audience.

“Well you made a cock up of that, didn’t you? For a second I thought you were about to do it right there on the forecourt, even considered pulling up a chair.”

The way Preacher laughed made Grinder want to ball his thick fist and pop his best friend in the face, because he knew he was right. “You gotta get pathetic, man, if you wanna fix this. Like real down low groveling, it’s the only thing that works.”

“I hate you, you big fucking buzz kill.” He sighed with the sourest scowl on his face. “Are you serious, like for real with me right now, ‘cause I can’t take jokes.”

“As the Grim Reaper is my witness.” The jackass had the gall to grin at Grinder’s misery. It was okay for Preacher, he already won his woman, he’d already gone as pathetically low as a man could, and seemed happy as shit about it, you couldn’t turn around in the clubhouse now without bumping into moaning noises from either Rider and Zara or Preacher sucking face with his Ruby.

---